Grantee Spotlight: LGBTQ Advocacy
This year alone, more than 120 bills have been written to restrict the freedoms, opportunities, and livelihoods of trans people in the United States. Fighting against those bills is an army of some of the fiercest advocates, lobbyists, policy wonks, and public speakers in our community. If you are looking to support organizations that fight for us, day in and day out, we offer these suggestions to you:
The National Center for Lesbian Rights
The National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) is the first national LGBTQ legal organization founded by women and brings a fierce, longstanding commitment to racial and economic justice and our community’s most vulnerable.
Since 1977, NCLR has been at the forefront of advancing the civil and human rights of our full LGBTQ community and their families through impact litigation, public policy, and public education. Decades ago, NCLR led the way by establishing the first LGBTQ Immigration Project, Transgender Rights Project, Youth Project, Elder Law Project, and began working to end conversion therapy through what is now the Born Perfect campaign.
TLDEF’s Executive Director, Andy Marra, was a 2021 Stonewall Vision Award Honoree.
Founded in 2003, Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit whose mission is to end discrimination and achieve equality for transgender people, particularly those in our most vulnerable communities. Transgender people have been subject to pervasive discrimination that has kept them, with rare exceptions, hidden from public view. While this discrimination has started to lessen, transgender people still experience immense prejudice and violence.
TLDEF’s strategies include pathbreaking trans rights cases and "friend of the court" briefs regarding the key issues of employment, health care, education and public accommodations. They seek to coordinate with traditional civil rights organizations and other LGBTQ civil rights organizations, and also provide public education on transgender rights.
Founded in 1986, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and HIV Project is a special division of the American Civil Liberties Union. The project staff are experts in constitutional law and civil rights, specializing in sexual orientation, gender identity, and HIV. The project brings impact lawsuits in state and federal courts throughout the country, cases designed to have a significant effect on the lives of LGBTQ people and people living with HIV. In coalition with other civil rights groups, they also lobby in congress and support grassroots advocacy from local school boards to state legislatures. Their legal strategies are built on the idea that fighting for civil rights means not just persuading judges but ultimately changing the way America thinks about LGBTQ people. As they litigate for change, they implement targeted media, online, and outreach campaigns to change public attitudes through education and to give people on the frontlines the tools they need to act.